Francisco d'Anconia on the U.S. and the Rebirth of the World

"Dagny," he was saying, standing at the window, as if looking out at the peaks, not of the mountains, but of time, "the rebirth of d'Anconia Copper -- and of the world -- has to start here, in the United States. This country was the only country in history born, not of chance and blind tribal warfare, but as a rational product of man's mind. This country was built on the supremacy of reason -- and, for one magnificent century, it redeemed the world. It will have to do so again. The first step of d'Anconia Copper, as of any other human value, has to come from here -- because the rest of the earth has reached the consummation of the beliefs it has held through the ages: mystic faith, the supremacy of the irrational, which has but two monuments at the end of its course: the lunatic asylum and the graveyard... Sebastian d'Anconia committed one error: he accepted a system which declared that the property he had earned by right, was to be his, not by right, but by permission. His descendants paid for that error. I have made the last payment... I think that I will see the day when, growing out from their root in this soil, the mines, the smelters, the ore docks of d'Anconia Copper will spread again through the world and down to my native country, and I will be the first to start my country's rebuilding. I may see it, but I cannot be certain. No man can predict the time when others will choose to return to reason. It may be that at the end of my life, I shall have established nothing but this single mine -- d'Anconia Copper No. 1, Galt's Gulch, Colorado, U.S.A. But, Dagny, do you remember that my ambition was to double my father's production of copper? Dagny, if at the end of my life, I produce but one pound of copper a year, I will be richer than my father, richer than all my ancestors with all their thousands of tons -- because that one pound will be mine by right and will be used to maintain a world that knows it!"

[All italics are from the book itself. The lines in bold are the Project's own emphases.]